Who are serial returners and how much do they cost retailers?

Serial returners are around a tenth (11%) of shoppers but account for roughly £6.6bn of returns a year, and together with slow returners they drive close to half of all returns. The share of serial returners has since fallen from 12% to 8% of shoppers, forecast to save the industry £1.7bn in returns in 2025.

How to Reduce eCommerce Returns: The Playbook Fashion Retailers Are Using to Cut Their Return Rate

Returns are the quiet margin killer in fashion eCommerce. For most clothing brands, a rising return rate is the single biggest drain on contribution per order, yet it is often treated as a fixed cost of doing business.

By reducing the return rate, retailers can make existing returns cheaper and prevent future returns. This playbook covers how to reduce eCommerce returns, including what the drivers behind high fashion return rates are, what leading retailers do before despatch, how the right returns experience lowers cost and reduces returns and where a managed delivery partner fits in.

Why fashion has the worst return rate in eCommerce and what that costs

Across eCommerce the average return rate sits at around 19–20%. Fashion sits well above that. Clothing runs at roughly 23.6% in the UK, the highest of any major category, with footwear close behind with a similar 17–30% band, driven by fit and sizing uncertainty and by shoppers ordering several sizes to keep one (ONS/ Retail Economics, 2026).

The average return fee charged to consumers by major UK retailers is approximately £5.70. But if the true operational cost to retailers is factored in, it’s much higher, averaging £10 to £20 per package once reverse logistics, restocking and processing expenses are factored in (Home of Direct Commerce).

Processing a single returned item in the UK can now lead to a higher cost once carriage, inspection, grading and re-stocking are counted. This is enough to wipe out the margin on the sale. On fashion, that figure climbs higher, because stock returned late often misses its selling window and has to be discounted.

With a forecast of more than £25bn of non-food goods returns in the UK in 2025 (Retail Economics/ Zig Zag, 2025/2026), returns are a core P&L line, not an operational footnote.

The four return-rate drivers (sizing, expectation gap, try-before-you-buy, serial returners)

Cutting returns starts with knowing why they happen. Four drivers do most of the damage:

Sizing and fit:
Poor fit is the number-one reason fashion items come back. Fulfilmentcrowd research found that around one in ten (10%) shoppers regularly return clothing because it does not fit (Fulfilmentcrowd, 2025), a problem made worse when sizing varies from one product to another.

The expectation gap:
When the product that arrives does not match the photography, the fabric description or the on-model styling, it goes back. That gap sits almost entirely within the retailer’s control.

Try-before-you-buy and bracketing:
Shoppers increasingly order the same item in two or three sizes, intending to keep one, a habit known as bracketing. This is often encouraged by free returns and pay-later checkouts. It inflates order values and return rates alike.

Serial returners:
A small group does outsized harm. In 2024, serial returners are around a tenth (11%) of shoppers but account for roughly £6.6bn of returns a year; together with slow returners, they drive close to half of all returns (Zigzag, 2024). But the picture is shifting. The share of serial returners fell from 12% to 8% of shoppers over the past year, a drop of about a third, forecast to save the industry £1.7bn in returns in 2025 (ZigZag and Retail Economics, 2025). That progress came from targeted action, not blanket fees, because serial returners are the least likely group to be put off by a returns charge.

What leading fashion retailers are doing before the parcel ships

The brands cutting their return rate front-load the work before despatch:

Better sizing intelligence:
Detailed, consistent size guides, fit-prediction tools and true-to-size signals pulled from reviews all reduce the guesswork that drives returns. Accurate size guides, consistent sizing and photo-based reviews, according to shoppers, would most reduce ordering in multiple sizes.

Richer product content:
Multiple images, video, fabric and measurement detail, plus real shopper photos close the expectation gap before the order is placed.

Smarter policies, targeted, not blanket:
Rather than charging every shopper, leaders follow the ASOS model of identifying and acting on the highest-return accounts while keeping a frictionless experience for everyone else. More than a third of the UK’s top 100 fashion retailers now charge for returns in some form, but the sharper play is using data to decide who and when.

Right-sizing the incentives:
Removing the nudges that encourage over-ordering, alongside adding styling guidance and clearer stock information that help the shopper commit to the purchase, reduces bracketing at the source

Returns portals, paperless returns and reason-code capture

Pre-purchase work reduces returns, while the returning experience decides the cost and what the business learns from them. A branded returns portal allows the shopper to self-serve, choose between drop-off and collection and generate a paperless QR code return label. By doing so, there is no printer friction and no lost paperwork. Paperless returns lower the cost per return and improve the shopper experience at the same time.

The most valuable output of a good returns process is data. Capturing a clear reason code on every return – too small, too big, not as pictured, faulty or changed mind – turns each one into feedback. Analysing those codes by product, size and SKU shows exactly which lines to fix, which size charts to correct and which photography to re-shoot.

GFS’ delivery and returns technology gives retailers a branded portal, paperless labelling and the reason-code reporting that powers this loop.

Where a managed delivery partner fits in the reduction story

Reducing returns is part merchandising, part content, part data and part logistics. And the logistics layer is where a managed partner makes a difference. A good return journey needs convenient return options for shoppers, capable carriers to run them, and clean tracking data to provide feedback.

GFS brings that together. Through returns management, retailers can give shoppers a simple, branded returns experience across multiple carriers and drop-off networks, with paperless labels and full visibility. Meanwhile, the reason-code data brings the return rate down over time. As a managed multi-carrier delivery partner, GFS connects every carrier and return route through a single integration, so there is no need to stitch together a separate solution for each return.

Behind the technology sits the part that matters most when returns are eating margin: a UK-based account and shopper service team who understand fashion logistics and bring pro-active and knowledgeable support to turn returns from a cost centre into a source of insight. The aim is to reduce returns in the first place and keep the shoppers worth keeping.